Arizona surpasses 30,000 documented COVID-19 deaths

PHOENIX – The number of COVID-19 deaths documented in Arizona surpassed 30,000 on Wednesday.

The Arizona Department of Health Services added 238 fatalities to its pandemic dashboard in the latest weekly update, increasing the total to 30,189.

Wednesday’s update included 3,911 additional cases, pushing the total to 2,025,435.

The positivity rate for samples taken April 24-30 was 6%, the highest since Feb. 20-26.

The week-by-week breakdown shows a total of 74 Arizonans dying from COVID over the four weeks from April 3 to April 30. The total for the previous four weeks was 382.

The state stopped gathering and reporting hospitalization data after March 30, when Gov. Doug Ducey ended the statewide health emergency.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that the number of newly reported coronavirus cases and deaths globally continued to fall in the last week, continuing a decline that first began in March.

In its weekly report on the pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were about 3.8 million new infections and more than 15,000 deaths last week, a 17% and 3% drop on the week respectively. But those figures are believed to be a significant underestimate of COVID-19’s true toll as increasing numbers of countries abandon widespread testing and surveillance.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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